A website that’s not mobile-friendly is similar to a kid in a class who studies hard but doesn’t get the grades he expects. No matter how hard or well constructed your website is, if it’s not mobile-friendly, your efforts are going in vain and you might not even realize. A responsive website that is also mobile-friendly is necessary for today’s internet environment when people use their smartphones to search for a product rather than their desktop.
Having a mobile-friendly SEO plan from the beginning not only helps you with an initial boost to your online presence but also makes your business more consumer-friendly. Basically, if your website is as easy to navigate on a mobile as it is on a desktop and the contents on it are easily visible to the consumer, your website is mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendly SEO is not very different from normal SEO but sure has some technicalities that one must understand in order to have a vivid sense of the concept. Through this article, we try to understand what a mobile-friendly website really means for a business and how to go about making your website mobile-friendly.
What is mobile-friendly SEO?
It was just in 2018 when online marketers and SEO had to go through an entire paradigm shift when Google made mobile-first indexing a big deal. But, those who were even a little informed knew that it was coming if not today, tomorrow.
- Even before Google made major changes in its algorithm to make mobile-first indexing a priority, the smartphone market had exploded overall. As mobile phone affordability grew, more people started to purchase them, and slowly and slowly anyone and everyone had a smartphone.
- From a customer’s point of view, mobile phones are the go-to choice when it comes to “looking something up on the web”.
- Simply put, mobile friendly SEO is a practice that allows your website to be as readily available for the user on the mobile as the desktop. There are two ways you can go about making a mobile friendly website.
- You can begin by creating a separate website for mobile than that of the desktop using a subdomain or you can also make your original website responsive. In most cases, the latter is the best option to go about.
- What is more important to understand is that even if your website doesn’t get a lot of mobile traffic, if it is not a mobile friendly website, Google will not rank you higher. In fact, it is one of the most critical ranking signals for modern-day websites.
![Mobile Friendly SEO](https://www.thepostcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/mobile-friendly-300x158.png)
Why is mobile-friendly important for SEO?
If you are a marketer managing a brand or a brand owner yourself, it’s paramount to understand why your business even needs to be mobile-friendly for better search engine optimization of your website?
- From a consumer standpoint, people are inclined to check out your website or read about your products on mobile rather than desktop. It’s convenient and quick. So when doing SEO, you have to think from the consumer’s side and indulge in processes that make your website responsive from the very beginning. As an SEO, your role is surely to make a website search engine ready but it is also to understand your customer and work accordingly.
- Again, if your website is not indexed optimally for mobile, there are chances that your website, even the most relevant pages, won’t appear on search results thanks to Google’s Algorithm. If your website doesn’t rank on mobile, all the SEO efforts go down in vain.
- The user experience also matters because if your desktop website is proper and easily navigated by a user, it should be similar to the mobile. However, the UX of a mobile is very different from a desktop and that’s where SEO and UX design merge and enhance your website’s mobile friendliness.
How to Make Your Site Mobile Friendly for SEO
There are key elements to making a mobile-friendly site. The most important thing to remember is that it’s always better to make the website mobile-friendly right from the very beginning. However, it’s never too late to rework.
- You must first begin by categorizing which path you would want to take? Would it be creating a separate mobile friendly site using a subdomain or developing the existing website responsive?
- Making the website dynamic is another option. You can work with your web designer to build a dynamic website that uses HTTP headers to let the servers know that it’s a mobile page the traffic is trying to visit.
- If you go about creating a website from scratch with a subdomain, there is a whole lot of design and development time that will go into it. Once optimized, Google will consider your mobile content for mobile traffic and desktop content for desktop.
- When creating a responsive site, you are still required to build upon the existing UX to make the website more friendly for a mobile user.
- In either case, from images to videos and text, everything should be in a format that fits in that little box screen. Something like a dropdown menu tab or center aligned and legible font size matter a lot in terms of SEO of a website for mobile.
- Moving from one page to the other should be smooth as butter. Buttons on clickable links, directions and the comfort to shift between pages with a single tap is what makes a mobile-friendly website.
Does mobile-friendly affect SEO?
In a short answer — Yes. Mobile-friendly affects your SEO process quite drastically. If you are not mobile-friendly a ton of your SEO practices can be for nothing.
- Imagine writing a blog that’s only readable on a desktop and you share it on various social media sites for people to read. A majority of them will try to open the blog on their mobile rather than going to a desktop and opening it.
- Although aspects like the title tags, URL, slug, content format, image alt tags, and every other on-page SEO element remain the same as in mobile than desktop, it’s the UX experience that has to be worked upon. If your website is not made accessible to the user, they are quickly going to deliver. And a bad experience in today’s time means that the consumer is never returning.
- Mobile-friendliness light does not affect your overall website but since 2018, after Google made it clear that they were prioritizing mobile websites over desktop websites, it’s evident that you will be lost in the crowd rather than rising to the top.
- Since it’s a ranking signal, you can also expect some scrutiny from Google for not being mobile-friendly.
While expanding your business to great heights where website plays a mojor role for majority of audience . If you want to take your business to new heights with SEO and organic reach at the core, the mobile-friendliness of your website is paramount. From a user’s point of view, it’s important. From a search engine’s point of view, it’s important. So, there is no reason why you shouldn’t make your website mobile-friendly. Apart from SEO, your online advertising efforts also crumble when you have a nonresponsive, mobile-friendly website.
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